Housing News Digest
Housing News Digest
The Tenants' Union Housing News Digest compiles our pick of items from all the latest tenancy and housing media, sent once per week, on Thursdays.
Below is the Digest archive from November 2020 onwards. From time to time you will find additional items in the archive that did not make it into the weekly Digest email. Earlier archives are here, where you can also find additional digests by other organisations.
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Archive
‘Everything on the table’: Premier says scare campaigns won’t stop housing reforms
Tim Barlass The Sydney Morning Herald (No paywall)Premier Dominic Perrottet said authorities should “put everything on the table” to tackle housing affordability and booming prices, following a Herald report that revealed tougher borrowing limits would put ownership out of reach for many Australians.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/everything-on-the-table-prem…
# NSW, Rent, Home ownership, Housing affordability, Planning and development, Tax, Young people.Exploding the myth that increasing supply will fix Sydney’s soaring house prices
Nicole Gurrin The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Booming house prices and plummeting affordability are fuelling anxiety among Sydneysiders and bringing out the supply side “splainers”, who blame urban planning rules for high house prices because they prevent new housing supply. The idea has been around a long time. It’s stuck because it makes intuitive sense – simple supply and demand. We’re all familiar with the basics of supply and demand; when the supply of a product – such as bananas – goes down, prices go up, and vice versa. Of course, the housing market is different — in my household, when bananas are expensive, we switch to pears or mandarins, but we can’t as easily substitute our housing needs. Nor is there money to be made by hoarding fruit, unlike houses which have become financialised assets valued for their potential to grow wealth rather than places to live. Industry groups, politicians, and others ignore these differences and refuse to consider structural solutions to Australia’s housing problems. It’s easier to blame planning regulation and a lack of new supply.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/it-s-a-myth-that-increasing-supp…
# Hot topic NSW, Housing affordability, Housing market, Planning and development.Housing policy is a failure for young and old
Don Edgar and Patricia Edgar Pearls and Irritations (No paywall)Blaming Baby Boomers for the housing crisis is a diversion. What we need is a complete rethink of our housing supply.
https://johnmenadue.com/housing-policy-is-a-failure-for-young-an…
# Australia, Families, Housing market, Older people, Young people.Airbnb registry in play but fire safety on back burner
Jimmy Thomson (No paywall)It has almost been forgotten during the great Covid exodus of foreign tourists, and the intermittent border closures in Australia, but NSW is about to impose its long-awaited compulsory registry of holiday rental homes.
# NSW, Short-term holiday letting.Homebuyers to need $200,000 a year in many suburbs if debt limits come in
Jennifer Duke and Elizabeth Redman The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Homebuyers will need to earn more than $200,000 a year to buy a mid-range house in more than 270 Sydney suburbs if tougher borrowing limits are introduced. ... More than 500 suburbs in Sydney would require a $100,000-a-year income to service an average mortgage, and in Melbourne the same applies to more than 300 suburbs. Check out the table entitled: 'Sydney house prices and income needed to purchase'.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/homebuyers-to-need-200-0…
# Australia, Home ownership, Housing affordability, Housing market.First home buyers hit with 'emotional rollercoaster' trying to break into sky-high property market
Poppy Johnston ABC (No paywall)For over a year, Brisbane couple Eve Anderson and Jordan Roberts have spent every weekend at back-to-back open homes. Their lives have been swallowed up by inspections, scrolling property websites and chasing real estate agents as they hunt for their first home in a market which has seen a 20 per cent increase over the past year. Multiple times the pair have fallen in love with a property and spent days assembling the paperwork to put in an offer only to learn that the house has already sold for $100,000 over the asking price. For the couple — who both work full time — it's been 12 months of disappointment, frustration, and the same conversations on repeat. "It's an emotional rollercoaster," Anderson says.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-24/the-emotional-toll-of-bre…
# Australia, Home ownership, Housing market.These households are ditching gas, slashing bills and going 'net zero'. Here's how
James Purtill ABC (No paywall)n February 2020, just before the pandemic, Annabelle and Alex bought a typical Melbourne home in Brunswick East — almost a century old, draughty, and with gas heating and hot water. After receiving a $400 gas bill in their first month, they began a process of improving insulation, swapping out gas appliances for electrical ones, and generally making the house "net zero" in terms of energy use, meaning it produces as much energy as it consumes over a period of time.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2021-10-25/households-ditchi…
# Australia, Utilities water energy internet, Climate change, Housing market.Super-low fixed rate mortgage party looks over
John Collett The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Any doubts that the best is over for fixed-interest rate mortgages were quashed last week when the Commonwealth Bank increased its longer-term fixed rates – a move quickly matched by Westpac.
https://www.smh.com.au/money/borrowing/super-low-fixed-rate-mort…
# Australia, Housing market.